The Sign for Love
by Michelle Birkby
Summary: SPOILERS An accident leaves Sara deaf. How will Grissom cope?


He sits quietly in the corridor, staring ahead at an empty wall, mindlessly turning a pen over and over in his hands. For once, he is grateful that the sharp sounds around are muted to a dull, muffled whisper by his ...illness. That way, he can't hear them work to save her. He will not wince at the sounds of the tools being used on her, the surgeon's urgent cries for help, for assistance, the steady drip drip of her blood on the ER floor.  
  
But he can still hear himself. And all he can hear is his voice, saying calmly, quietly,   
  
"Sara. Run. Now."  
  
And then the explosion. That was ten hours ago, but that's all he can hear, over and over and over again. He cannot hear Catherine running past him, nor Nick weeping silently beside him, nor Brass swearing down the phone, nor Warrick patiently explaining to Greg what exactly happened.  
  
All he can hear is his own warning. Then the sound of his world being ripped apart, as she fell.  
  
But of course, he had to come back to reality. Sooner or later, he had to draw himself out of his little world of self-blame and face the surgeon walking towards him, his gown flapping, stained red with Sara's blood. He stood up slowly, carefully pinning his mask of detachment on his features to face the world.  
  
"Is she ok?" Nick asked hurriedly.  
  
"She's alive" the surgeon told them. "She sustained mostly percussive injuries in the blast, but we've managed to fix those. She'll be ok. But as for the long term..."  
  
"Long term?" That was Warrick, behind Grissom.  
  
"Look, does she have any family here?" the surgeon asked, reluctant to talk to them without next of kin present.  
  
"No, her family....she's not close to them. We're...I.." Grissom stumbled to a halt, unable to voice exactly what Sara was to them.  
  
"We're her family." Catherine said, unhesitatingly.  
  
"Ok. Well, the truth is, her eardrums were damaged. Fairly badly. Now, this may not affect her hearing at all, and even if it does, it may not be permanent, but there's no way of knowing that at the moment. Once she's awake, we...."  
  
"She's deaf?" Grissom interrupted.   
  
"She may be." the surgeon said warily.  
  
Without another word, Grissom turned round, and walked out of the hospital.  
  
  
  
It was a long walk home. He may even have got lost a few times. Sara was deaf. How could Sara be deaf? That wasn't right. That wasn't how things were supposed to go. Everything was wrong. The world had a natural order of things. Sometimes Grissom couldn't see the order, but he accepted it. How could Sara being deaf possibly fit into that? It wasn't right.  
  
But if you'd asked Grissom why it wasn't right, he couldn't have told you.  
  
By the time he got home, he had a migraine, and the only sure cure for one of those was to sleep. He collapsed into bed, and slept, dreamlessly, for ten hours.  
  
  
  
When he woke up, it was to the sound of Catherine moving about his kitchen, cooking.  
  
"What are you doing?" he asked her, walking into the kitchen.  
  
"You're always starving after you've had one of those migraine sleeps. I thought I'd make you breakfast."  
  
"What are you doing here?" he asked, incredulous.  
  
"I have a key. You gave it to me." She explained patiently.  
  
"That's for emergencies."  
  
"I think this counted as one." She said. Grissom stared at her, intensely.  
  
"What's wrong. Is Sara ok?" he asked quickly.  
  
"She's fine. Sit down." Grissom sat down obediently, as Catherine placed a plate in front of him, and started ladling food onto it. "She woke up a few hours ago. She seemed ok. She wanted to know why you weren't there."  
  
"I had a headache."  
  
"Yeah, right. I told her you were writing a report on the incident. She can't hear, by the way, but they're not sure if that's permanent yet."  
  
"How is she taking that?"  
  
"Good, on the surface."  
  
"How do I explain it, Catherine." Grissom asked, laying down his knife and fork, and staring into her eyes, as she sat opposite him, cradling a cup of coffee in her hands. "How do I explain getting one of my C.S.I's blown up?" Even as he said it, he winced. Sara. He'd almost killed Sara.  
  
"Will you even listen if I try to tell you it wasn't your fault?"  
  
"Catherine, it's the responsibility of the senior C.S.I on the scene to ensure that its safe to be investigated. I failed Sara."  
  
"Oh, crap." Catherine snapped. "It wasn't even a hot scene. The guy's already in prison. You weren't to know he'd booby-trapped the place. He hadn't even been there for a year. All you two were looking for was additional evidence. You were using it as a teaching exercise, remember?"  
  
He remembered. Remembered Sara saying 'We're going to process a cold scene? Where's the fun in that?". Remembered himself saying 'The challenge, Sara. The fun is in the challenge."  
  
"I still should have been careful." He said, getting up and carrying his still full plate to the counter.  
  
"So, tell me Gil, what do you feel most guilty about?" Catherine asked. "The fact that you accidentally got Sara blown up, or the fact that now she may be deaf, and you can't face that, because that would mean having to face your own deafness?"  
  
Grissom froze. His carefully constructed lines of defence crumbled. That was what was holding him back. That was why Sara wasn't supposed to have been deaf. Because when he became deaf, she was going to be the one. The one he turned to for help, to lean on, to depend on, to be his ears, his saviour, his support...his life.   
  
"How did you know?" he asked, and he didn't just mean the deafness.  
  
"I am an investigator, in case you hadn't noticed." She pointed out, grabbing her jacket and leaving. "I'll see you at the hospital."  
  
"Catherine..."  
  
"No, you will be there. Look, Sara was pleased to see us all, but you're the important one. You the one that matters to her. She needs to know you're still there for her, as a friend, as a teacher, whatever you choose to be. But you will be there for her, no matter what."  
  
Catherine left, leaving Grissom alone.   
  
Sara was deaf. Sara, his Sara, was deaf. She'd never hear music again. Never hear the wind, never hear laughter. She'd never hear the faint ticking of the clock, the soothing sound of far away traffic, the click of heels in the corridor, be annoyed by Greg's rock music, eavesdrop on Catherine and Warrick's flirting, never, never again. She'd never hear her name spoken again.  
  
And he'd never hear himself speak it.   
  
She'd never hear someone say 'I love you' again.  
  
But he never could have said it out loud anyway. Such tiny little words, such a simple sentence, to express such an enormous, all-consuming, life-changing emotion.  
  
She'd be lost, alone, in her little world of silence, but then again, Sara had never really been a part of the great seething mass of humanity.  
  
And neither had he. They'd always had their own ways of communicating, apart from sound. The briefest touch of his hand, the intense exchange of momentary glances. This was all they needed.  
  
Grissom was so eager to get out the front door, he forgot his coat. He nearly ran down the street. First to the bookstore. Then, to the hospital.  
  
  
  
Sara was alone. She stood at the window, staring out on to the street. He could tell she was trying to hear, hear the sounds on the street, the children in the playground opposite. He'd done the same himself, not so very long ago.  
  
She turns, to see him.   
  
"How did you know I was here?" he asks, aware she can't hear him, but she can guess the question from his expression.  
  
"Telepathy?" she jokes, her voice too loud now she can't hear it.  
  
"Are you ok?" he asks.  
  
She nods, but her eyes are fragile, and scared, and so dark he could drown in them. She glances quickly at the book he holds in his hands. It's a book of sign language. She takes the book from his hand, and starts to flip though it, eager to learn, as always, eager to be his star pupil. He takes the book from her hand, and turns her face to him.   
  
"I'm sorry I wasn't here early. I was..scared."  
  
"Scared?" she questions.  
  
"Scared to face my future." He tells her, so softly, that if she weren't deaf, she couldn't hear him anyway.  
  
"You see, I know what you're going through." He says gently, then, reaching down for a pad of paper, he writes on it 'I'm going deaf. Ostosclerosis.'  
  
"You are?" she asks. "When did this happen? Why didn't you tell us? Grissom...."   
  
He puts his figures over her mouth to shush her.  
  
"I learnt Latin, when I was young." He says quietly, knowing she can't hear him, but she watches him anyway, watches his lips so carefully, and he realises this is Sara's first lesson in lip-reading. "The first verb they teach you in Latin is 'love'. Amo, I love. Amas, you love....."  
  
His hands moved down from her face, down her arms, to her hands. Touch will be all-important now she can no longer hear him. Carefully, tenderly, he takes her hands, and shapes them to a sign.  
  
"This," he tells her. "is the sign for love." 


End file.
